Coordinator NEW guidance for the submission
of Electronic Language Flag Award Results
UPDATED MARCH 2013
How to return electronic marking grids to British Airways for
processing.
STEP 1
The school coordinator will receive an email, which will
include a generic ‘zipped folder’ containing a master copy of
grids.
Instructions – detaching marking grids
 Double click on the zipped folder to open, inside you
will find a folder including a number of files – each
containing 25 marking grids. (Labelled 01-25, 26-50,
51-75, 76-100, 101-125, 126-150, 151-175, 176200, 201-225 & 226-250)
 Double click on the zipped folder to unzip it. Then select
File, Save As and choose an appropriate place to save the
file on your school network/drive. PLEASE SAVE THE
FILE AS BALFA MASTER USN (Your Unique School
Number) and your School name.
 NOTE:
YOU
MUST
DETACH
AND
SAVE
AS
ABOVE
BEFORE COMPLETING THE GRIDS, AS ZIPPED FILES
ARE “READ ONLY” AND ANY INFO YOU INPUT WILL
NOT BE SAVED
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 If you now make an extra copy of this unzipped file, you
will have your own master file, which will mean you
will no longer have to request grids. If you do forget to do
this, a set will be available to download from our
website. www.ba.com/communitylearningcentre.

STEP 2
Instructions – completing the marking grids
 Open up the first saved file (01-25), ignore the first work
sheet entitled ‘Summary’ as no input is required here.
 Along the bottom of the document, you will see numbered
tabs. Click on the first numbered sheet (no.1) and
complete the following fields (marked yellow) at the top
of the marking grid
 Please note that there have been some slight changes to
this part of the grids.
TABS
(i)
Candidate’s First Name and Surname
PLEASE
ENSURE
YOU
TYPE
THE
NAME
OF
THE
STUDENT EXACTLY AS YOU WANT IT TO APPEAR ON
THE CERTIFCATE.
If you request re-prints due to
spelling errors, it could take up to 3 months to process.
(ii)
School name & Unique School Number (USN)
You will only have to type this in once on grid number 1
only and it will appear on all the grids automatically.
(iii) Tester’s name
(iv)
Language
As you want it to appear on the certificate
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(v)
Year Group
You only need to type in the number of the year group
(e.g 9 or 10)
(vi)
Date
Click on the yellow area, a downward arrow will appear
from which you can select a date from the list (1-31).
There is a separate yellow area with another downward
arrow to select the month and year.
STEP 3
 Then proceed to complete the marks for the four sections:
(i)
Conversation
(ii)
Reading
(iii) Role Play
(iv)
Listening
 To enter a candidate’s marks, you can either type an X in
the relevant box OR when you click on a box it will
highlight a drop down menu. You can choose the X from
the drop down menu and it will automatically be
entered into the marking grid.
 As you scroll down the page to enter the marks for other
sections, the top part of the marking grid will seem to
disappear.
The information is still there, it is just
temporarily hidden.
 No calculation or marking of scores is necessary, as the
sheet will automatically do this for you. When you have
completed the marking grid move on to the next tab at
the bottom of the document, in this case, tab no.2.
 NOTE: if you erroneously enter two marks for the same
topic, an error message will appear asking you to correct.
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Simply click on the mark you wish to remove, right click
on the mouse and the choose, “clear contents”
 If you complete the 25 marking grids, save and close and
then move onto the next saved file (26-50) and compete
the same process.
 Please only send back the sets of grids that you have
completed, eg if you have tested 50 candidates, please
delete the sets of grids that you have not used (75-100,
101-125, etc). If you have completed the first set (1-25)
and then part of the second set (26-27), please send the
complete set back (26-50).
 It will aid the process if your file is saved as and then
sent to us, as for example:
BALFA USN123 RYDE HIGH MAR 1-100
No
of
grids
you
are
sending
Unique School Number
Submission month
Name of your school
STEP 4
Instructions – returning marked grids to BA
Once you have completed as many marking grids as you need
for the period in question, you are now ready to return the
marked grids to BA.
The cut off dates for submissions are:
31 December
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Will cover all marked grids received from September 1st
to
December 31st
Certificates & badges will be sent to you by the end of January
at the latest
31 March
Will cover all marked grids received from January 1st to March
31st
Certificates and badges will be sent to you by the end of April
at the latest
31 July
Will cover all marked grids received from April 1st
to July
31st
Certificates and badges will be sent to you by the start of
September
PLEASE SAVE ALL GRIDS FOR A PERIOD AND SEND THEM IN
ONE GO AT THE SUBMISSION TIMES.
WE CAN NO LONGER
ACCEPT GRIDS SENT OUTSIDE OF THESE TIMES.
To return the marked grids to BA, please follow these steps:
 Create a zipped folder in Excel by selecting File, New,
Compressed (zipped) folder. Simply title it as mentioned
above eg.
BALFA USN123 RYDE HIGH MAR 1-100.
 Lastly email to:
Flag-Award.Results@ba.com remembering to attach your
zipped folder.
 We would recommend creating a new zipped folder for
each period to avoid confusion
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That’s the end of the electronic process.
We recommend that
you always keep a copy of your completed grids once you have
sent them to BA.
British Airways will delete the grids after a submission period
and keep only the summary sheets.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Why have you changed to an electronic system?
There are several reasons:
 The Flag Award has become so successful that it is no
longer manageable on a manual system.
Currently all
school results are processed by hand, which takes several
weeks to complete.
 When processing such a volume manually, there is a
greater likelihood of errors in spellings, which leads to
re-printing certificates
 The electronic system can deal with large volumes of
results much more quickly and accurately, resulting in a
much quicker turnaround time.
 Some marking grids and certificates have been lost in the
post.
This leads to disappointment when certificates do
not arrive and if photocopies haven’t been taken, there is
no record of the test having taken place.
Why do you now send a master copy of grids for each
school and no longer send grids at each period?
 As the BALFA programme grows, we need to find ways to
simplify the process. We will no longer need to send grids
to
you,
as
you
will
have
your
own
master
copy.
Alternatively, you will be able to download the sets of
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grids
from
our
website
www.ba.com/communitylearningcentre.
What if I make a spelling error and need a certificate
re-printing?
We will still deal with RE-PRINTS manually, as these will be
minimal. You just need to email the Flag Award mailbox with
the student details. These will be checked against our database
and your certificate will be amended and sent to you. Due to
unusually high work loads at present, it will take up to 3
months to process incorrect name spellings on certificates, so
please ensure you check your spelling before you send to us.
What do I do if I don’t want to submit tests for a
specific period?
We will email the BALFA Co-ordinator at your school asking if
you require grids for each submission period. It is up to the Coordinator to respond if grids are required.
If I do some testing at the start of a period, do I have to
wait until the submission time to send the grids back?
You can send them back before the end of a submission time
but you would have to wait until the closing date for them to
be processed. This is because the system is set up to process all
UK school results at the same time.
What is the role of the school Coordinator?
It’s a very important one! The school Coordinator is the person
that British Airways will communicate with regarding school
results.
They will be sent the blank marking grids and be
responsible for emailing them back when they are completed.
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They are also responsible for ensuring all the testers’ results for
the school are on the marking sheets. This does NOT mean that
the Co-ordinator has to complete all the marking sheets
themselves! If there are several testers at one school, we would
recommend that the marking grids are saved on a shared drive
or memory stick and each tester is responsible for adding their
own results to the file.
When all results are complete for the
school, the co-ordinator will email them back.
British
Airways will then send the certificates and badges to the coordinator for distribution.
What if I am the school coordinator and I leave the
school and want to test at another school?
It is really important that the role of Coordinator is given to
someone else and their email address is supplied to British
Airways. If you want to test in a new school, please supply this
email address and school details to us, so that we can create a
new unique school number for you.
Do the grids have to be inputted in order of passes,
COA’s, fails?
No. The system will automatically sort the grids and issue the
correct certificates
What happens if a student gets a COA and I want to
re-test them to see if they can achieve a full flag.
In this instance, keep the student’s record on file, as usual.
Re-test the section or sections that need to be re-tested and type
over the new marks onto the original electronic grid. We don’t
need a record of the COA if the full flag is achieved on retesting. If the student fails for a second time, keep the marks as
they were and we will issue a COA.
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Why do we have to use zipped folders?
Sending the electronic marking grids in a zipped folder is
necessary to compress the size of the grids, which would
otherwise be too large to send across the BA network.
If you have any further questions about the new system, please
do not hesitate to email deborah.workman@ba.com
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